For twenty years, the Art History study programme had its own journal, the highly successful Decorum, which was written and edited by students. When the last editor left, the magazine ceased publication. Now, more than 20 years later, it’s time for a new Art History journal.

Law researcher Evelien Campfens is calling for a better legal treatment of looted art. ‘For lawyers, ownership is a very absolute concept. There is one legal owner and that is that.’ Campfens is a PhD candidate at the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Global Heritage and Development.

On December 7th & 8th, visual artist Sophie Ernst will defend her thesis The Magic of Projection; Augmentation and Immersion in Media Art, to obtain her doctoral degree. The public defense takes place in two stages. On Wednesday 7 December 2016 at 4 PM Ernst will publicly elucidate the artistic work…

This programme aims to identify the intellectual contexts that were of importance for the architectural theory of the period, and especially to clarify the relation of architectural theory to primitivism.

We are excited to announce the book publication of our alumnus Dr. Budhaditya Chattopadhyay: The Auditory Setting Environmental Sounds in Film and Media Arts.

In January 2021, eLaw joined the Computers Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP) Conference that is about privacy and data protection. The group on Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University put together a panel that combined perspectives on Art, Society, & Technology.

It was not light, but its absence that caught Stephanie Noach's attention a few years ago. With her research on darkness in art, she aims to show how darkness can question and sometimes even undermine colonial imagery.

Anna Loh is a third-year student of the BA in Arts, Media and Society. We spoke with Anna about what it’s like to write a thesis during COVID-19, Instagram selfies at the museum and growing up abroad.

This masterclass examines the idea of disegno in relation to the early modern decorative arts by investigating the collection of Italian design drawings in the Rijksmuseum. Meaning both design and drawing, disegno was a fundamental concept in the development of artistic theory in early modern Europe…

In 2016, Marcel Cobussen successfully applied for two trainee positions at ACPA, funded by the Humanities Research Traineeship Programme at Leiden University. One of the results, a multi-media essay 'In Search of the Public. Exploring Contemporary Performance Practices of Classical Music in The Netherlands'…

Course

A brief review essay on some of the work that has been recently published in the emergent field of digital ethnography.

The recent rise in global migration movements and the simultaneous attempts to prevent migrations to the Global North in general and Europe in particular have produced numerous images and narratives that try to record and convey these events and their actors.

Children are generally not drawn to abstract art, research shows. But how exactly does abstract art affect our emotions? Through empirical research, psychologists from Leiden University are investigating at the Josef Albers Museum in Germany how this form of art can be made more relatable to the world…

A successful series of lectures on interior design, a symposium on four-poster beds and a new series of study afternoons on the horizon. University lecturer Alexander Dencher knows how to hold the attention of a growing audience. How does he do it? And what makes the history of interior design so fa…

ACPA Professor of Auditory Culture and Music Philosophy Marcel Cobussen will give a lecture at the Gaudeamus Academy Workshop Weekend. The GMW Academy is a prelude to the contemporary music festival Gaudeamus Muziekweek, taking place from 7 to 11 september in diverse venues within the center of Utr…

The PhD students at the Academy for Creative and Performing Arts of Leiden University include a composer, an artist and a baroque flautist. Henk Borgdorff, who studied the phenomenon of PhDs in the Arts, says, ‘Artistic research in all disciplines of the Arts is a booming business worldwide.’

Lecture, Seminar

Research on art is often compared to other forms of scientific research. Professor Henk Borgdorff believes that's unfortunate. 'Research on art is absolutely one of the front lines of science.' Inaugural lecture 10 February.

Steven Frost defended his thesis on 6 June 2017

Bruno Munari (1907–1998) was a prolific and influential artist, designer, and writer. Alessandro Colizzi’s study is the first extensive, detailed record of Munari’s graphic design production, and as such provides a substantial base for a full understanding of his oeuvre.

How can the importance of the image in late medieval spirituality be understood in the context of the love mysticism inspired by the imagery of the Song of Songs?

In the nationalist nineteenth century, people developed an interest in medieval language and literature. The study of medieval material in one’s own vernacular was thought to reveal a great national past. But why, then, was Old English studied by Germans, Danes, Italians and many other nationalities…

How can we view societal challenges from a different perspective? At the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF), Robert Zwijnenberg, Emeritus Professor of Art and Science Interactions, will call for more collaboration between artists and scientists.

The aim of the Indonesian-Dutch Literature Collective (which is allied to the Society of Dutch Literature (MNL)) is to support research into the literature of and about the Dutch Indies, from the era of the Dutch East India Company to the present. Starting in 1986, the collective has published its own…

The subject of the research is ‘difference and repetition’, an area which bears a direct relationship to Wjm Kok’s practice, in which the production of work always emerges and passes through series.

A new outreach initiative for the communication of artistic research!

How does a Leiden alumnus end up working at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)? In the case of Daniëlle Kisluk-Grosheide, it was partly down to chance, luck, fate. But that was preceded by a unique degree in decorative arts in Leiden.

In his Inaugural lecture of February 10th Prof. dr. Henk Borgdorff advocated positive understanding of artistic research, of reasoning in and through art, within academia.

Conference

On the initiative of Leiden Law School’s Art Committee, the festive opening of the photo exhibition of the Leiden Amateur Photographic Society (LAFV) took place on Friday 20 May 2022 in the C corridor of the Kamerlingh Onnes Building.

On 16 May 2023, Jan Aart Scholte presented research on the Regional Internet Registries to the annual conference of GIG-ARTS in Padua.

On Saturday 17 September Leiden will once again be the setting of the Night of Art and Knowledge. Come along and enjoy a fascinating mix of knowledge, theatre, music and art in the museums and academic locations such as the Hortus botanicus. Tickets are now on sale.

Advanced biotechnology allows us to select or alter the genetic makeup of human embryos. What limits do we impose on biotechnological intervention in nature and the human body? And whose call is that?

On a thursdaymorning our students were guided around a new exhibition in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. This exhibition displayed photographs and documents from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Western Arabian Peninsula.